Aussie astronaut Dr Andy Thomas says search for extraterrestrial life could unite Earth
As the anniversary of the 1969 moon landing nears, former Aussie astronaut Dr Andy Thomas says the search for extraterrestrial life could help unite a divided Earth.
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A mission to the Moon or Mars and the search for extraterrestrial life could help unite a divided Earth, former astronaut Andy Thomas says.
The upcoming anniversary of the 1969 moon landing has sparked new conversations about the
opportunities in space.
Human spaceflight is once again being seriously considered, while ever-improving technology is scouring planets for evidence of life.
Dr Thomas was born in Adelaide before becoming a NASA astronaut and remains one of the nation’s most passionate advocates for space-related adventures.
He spent a total of six months in space, on four missions over 12 years. These days he splits his time between his original home in Adelaide and his adopted hometown of Houston, Texas.
News Corp asked him why Earthlings spend billions of dollars exploring the galaxy and beyond.
Finding signs of extraterrestrial life would be a “stunning pinnacle” of human achievement, he said, a way of working together on a visionary project.
“To me there has to be a fundamentally good reason to go out and do it — and that’s to acquire the knowledge of the unknown and seek new life, to discover whether life has formed on another planet,” he said.
“If there is life on Mars, for example … that would be a profoundly significant moment and
achievement.”
Last week NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover detected high levels of methane, which could indicate some form of life. Evidence shows the Red Planet was likely habitable billions of years ago and astrobiologists believe there could be underground aquifers that might sustain life.
GLOBAL HELP NEEDED TO EXPLORE
Dr Thomas said while the original Moon mission was a decidedly American journey, future missions should be global collaborations that could unite people.
“If we stumble through this century divided, we can’t stand,” he said.
“Everyone on the planet got behind the moon landing and cheered Neil (Armstrong) and Buzz
(Aldrin) on. If we did this again as an international collaboration … what a positive thing for human society.”
While NASA is expected to lead most missions, it works closely with other space agencies including Europe and Japan’s.
In the United States there is some confusion over their next human Moon mission. In early June President Donald Trump criticised NASA for aiming to get astronauts there by 2024.
“They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defence and Science!”
His comments were bewildering both because he had previously pushed to get humans to the Moon and because the Moon is not part of Mars.
NASA interpreted his comments as being about a plan to eventually use the Moon as a jump-off point for sending humans to Mars.
It is planning to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024, and to have an
ongoing human presence there by 2028.
Private companies including Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have their own plans for human
spaceflight.
TOURISM: THE NEXT SPACE RACE
Virgin’s Richard Branson is aiming to send tourists into Near Earth Orbit. He reportedly wants to go up himself on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo sometime around July 20 — the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
However, Virgin has been promising for years that it is on the brink of launching space tourism.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin is also working towards tourism space tours.
It is highly likely humans will have new space adventures soon, while the search for life out there is a much rocker journey.
On Friday NASA announced its latest mission — sending a drone to Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon, to search for signs of life.
The nuclear-powered drone will be called Dragonfly.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Titan was the “most comparable to early Earth”, raising hopes there will be microbial life there. The drone is set to arrive in 2034.
For decades, Earth-based technology has scoured the skies for signs of intelligent life; so far to no avail.
Dr Thomas told News Corp that along with these grand adventures, space exploration was a perfect opportunity to inspire children to study science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, and also to inject more science literacy into the general populace.
A common refrain in the space industry is that to get kids interested in science, you have to invoke dinosaurs — or space. Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel estimates that three in four jobs of the future will demand STEM skills.
“The STEM argument is undeniable,” Dr Thomas said.
“I think the culture of the US was forever changed (by the 1969 moon landing) because the nature of technical achievement was infused into society.
“A society that valued hi-tech enterprises and that created the 21st Century culture that we enjoy today.”
A range of school programs and government grants have already begun to encourage students,
postgraduates and women into STEM-based space study. The International Space Station, long a hub of scientific research, is now letting students conduct experiments up in orbit, and is now even selling space to anyone who wants to study space’s effects.
1969 SPIN-OFFS
The 1969 space mission famously led to many spin-off technologies, which are often used as
arguments for the benefits of further missions. However, the popular myth that Teflon was one of those spin-offs is wrong — it had already been invented when it was used on the Apollo missions.
But the Apollo 11 mission did deliver the technology that eventually led to the Dustbuster, highly accurate quartz timekeeping devices, solar panels, intruder detectors, heart monitors, and even better firefighter equipment.
Today’s space industry is already furthering developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems, as well as high-end defence applications.
However, Dr Thomas says spin-offs should not be the main argument for going to the stars, and NASA agrees with him.
NASA says space exploration is about discovering new worlds, pushing the boundaries of science, and addressing fundamental questions about our place in the universe and the history of our solar system.
But the world’s most famous space agency also says it will bring the citizens of the world together.
“Through addressing the challenges related to human space exploration we expand technology,
create new industries, and help to foster a peaceful connection with other nations,” is its stated aim.
News Corp readers can celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing with our souvenir glossy magazine One Giant Leap, available for $4.95 at participating newsagents with the token inside The Courier Mail, Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph on Saturday, July 6.
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